10 Tax Breaks That Only The Rich Enjoy

We 99%ers love to call out the 1%. Some get to the 1% with hard work and luck, but many are placed there due to being born into privilege and likely a sizable inheritance. Others weasel their way into wealth. Few can get there in a way that wouldn’t make some “kooobaya-type god”scream mercy. Regardless of how the 1% made it to the top of the fiscal food chain, they can enjoy a whole host of benefits staying there — private jets, beautiful women, more beautiful women, houses, yachts, and — last but not least — some really tricky tax breaks so they can just keep accumulating more and more wealth!

Here are 10 tax breaks that only the super rich enjoy. Read ’em and weep.

Income Tax, Smincome TaxThe rich don’t need your stinkin’ income. CEOs can come out and say they’re going to take a $1 salary and the masses think that they’re being just so damn humble and giving. Not so. While us lowly folk have to work and get paid salary to do things like eat and have a roof over our heads and pay for our kids piano lessons, the rich can take their heaping savings and put it into investments that compound over time. Good thing these folks are not actually earning any income because that means they can enjoy 0% tax rates on all of their capital gains. The best us lowly folk can do is attempt to put together an investment plan that eventually provides us with enough dividends and capital gains to also take out our money tax free, even if we never have an army of beautiful girls/men and/or private jets (source)

Taxes Are for Losers (AKA Poor People)Some rich folk work in fields like investment banking, private equity management, or real estate partnerships. Not only do they get paid a lot off the bat for these roles in terms of total compensation, their pay is not in the form of that same lowly income you and I see deposited into our bank accounts every few weeks. These modern-day royals get to be paid in a “carried interest” which is – somehow – usually taxed as a capital gain instead of ordinary income. That means these richies are paying 20% taxes to the federal government on all of their earnings. Even Mitt Romney managed to pay 15% taxes for his great service to our country as head of Bain Capital (yea, aren’t you glad he didn’t become our president?) (source)

Home is Where the Cash IsThe government wants to encourage home ownership because this means the country is more stable, generally speaking. Thus, big brother provides tax incentives for home owners of all wealth levels (as long as you can afford a house.) However, the best writeoffs go to the super rich. The mortgage interest deduction lets taxpayers who itemize deduct the interest they pay on their home mortgages. The way the program is set up, the more expensive the home and the higher the homeowner’s tax bracket, the bigger that subsidy is. (source)”Less than one-third of taxpayers are able to take advantage of the deduction—it is restricted to those who itemize their deductions, a group that skews toward the upper end of the income distribution. Also, the benefit is tied to the marginal tax rate of the taxpayer and so has higher value to those with higher income. For households making above $200,000 a year, the average benefit is $1,784 a year in tax savings. For households earning $65,000 a year, the deduction generally yields less than $200 in tax savings.” (source)

That Foggy Definition of Charity the Rich LoveOh, what wonder, a 1%-er is donating something to charity. That’s great, if genuinely done to help an organization, but often the reason for donation is not exactly out of good will. It’s horrible to say but many charities are corporate scams. Seriously. Let’s take a look at Walmart. The Waltons, owners of Walmart, are using “Jackie O” trusts to both give money to charity AND pass on money to future generations without paying estate taxes. Oh, and did I mention they’re doing this all through their own charity, The Walton Family Foundation? This is perhaps more disturbing than the other tax loopholes because wealth dynasties are why inequality is cemented into American culture. (source)What’s more, “generally, you can deduct the fair market value of property you donate to charity if you’ve owned it for more than one year and the property is used to further the charity’s tax-exempt function. Thus, the appreciation in value is untaxed forever. The tax law limits the annual deduction for gifts of appreciated property to 30 percent of AGI, but that still provides a gaping tax loophole.” (source)

Beam Me Up and Around and Around ScottyGeez, private jets are just so damn expensive. But how else are the rich supposed to get from point A to point B? Not with the underlings, by god. There is a special subsidy for corporate jets which cost taxpayers $3 billion a year. Yes, a common tax trick and CEO perk is to pay for private jets under the guise of security (because what if a poor average flight attendant accidentally spilled coffee on their Prada suit during a turbulent flight???) If a benefit is classified as for security purposes the CEO will pay a reduced tax bill or no tax at all on the bene. (source)

Mooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo. Mooo. MooooneyI feel like we should just let this tax write off slide for the sheer fact of it being so ridiculous. JK. This will make you want to go tip some cows. In states like New Jersey, Florida, Texas, Iowa, Colorado, Alabama and more, farmers can take a tax deduction for their service feeding our great nation. That is, even farmers that aren’t farmers at all. According to an article in The Nation, that’s what Michael Dell did with his second home—a suburban ranch in Austin. Because he hunted there periodically and maintained a “well-managed deer herd,” he was able to reduce the property’s 2005 market value from $71.4 million to an agricultural value of $290,000. That saved Dell—but cost Texas—$1.2 million. Florida has a well-known “rent a cow” program (I kid you not.) What is this cow business? To qualify for the tax writeoff, Florida requires a couple of cows or a herd of goats, which don’t have to be on the property all the time. So you have wealthy people paying next to nothing on property tax because they own lots of acres and can afford to rent a few cows. (source)

John Edwards and Newt Gingrich Walked into a Bar (and didn’t pay any tax)
This one is a doosey and surprise surprise it involves politicians again. Slime of the earth. Payroll taxes are supposed to be paid on income from work, with social security payroll tax paid on the first $113k in earnings (as of 2013) and medicare payroll tax paid on all earnings. Except S corporations, which are made up of a partnership of self-employed type folks, don’t need to qualify all their earnings as payroll, and thus it doesn’t need to be taxed. This one gets a bit complicated to explain, so just check out this writeup to get the full picture of how dishonest richies can get away with legal tax loopholes that only benefit the 1% (source)

John Edwards: Senator Edwards earned $26.9 million from his work as a trial lawyer in 1995. He paid himself a salary of $360,000 each year for four years and took the rest as distributions from his S corp. This saved Senator Edwards an estimated $600,000 in payroll taxes. [New York Times, 7/10/2004]

Selling a House and Paying Taxes? Yea, Right.Even average American homeowners can take $250,000 of their home price increase tax free ($500,000 for married homeowners) which is a pretty good deal after years of fixing broken air conditioning systems and having termite genocide parties. But the real tax benefit for housing is only available to the super rich (surprise!) A 1031 Exchange, also called a like-kind exchange, enables real estate investors to trade the equity in one property to another property of equal or more value without having to pay taxes (yes, you heard me right.) The taxes will need to be paid eventually, but the investor, in the meantime, gets to reallocate their portfolio and you can still take a depreciation tax write-off on your properties that are being exchanged. There’s no limit to how many times you can do a 1031 exchange. Since the rich are doing this with their real estate investment property (you can’t do this with personal property, sorry 99%), when they do sell it eventually they’ll sell at the capital gains rate. (source)

Tax Breaks (i.e. Itemization) Seriously Favors the RichThere are many different tax deductions available to take. But, of course, in order to take a deduction, you must itemize your taxes. While itemizing makes financial sense for high-income Americans, it does not for low ones. This means that deductions are mostly utilized by the rich. Only about one-third of Americans itemize their deductions, and they are mostly the well off. In 2010, only 29.3% of those making between $30,000 and $50,000 itemized, but 96.8% of those making $250,000-plus did. (source)

One Home is Just Not EnoughSpeaking of itemized deductions, owners of two homes get to write the mortgage of their second one off as well, as long as they itemize. It turns out this tax benefit isn’t for folks who own tiny little vacation bungalows by the shore or middle-class lakeside cabins. Nope, the main benefactors are the super wealthy. Just to rub salt in the wound of us reg’ies, rich folk can DEDUCT THE INTEREST PAID ON THEIR LUXURY YACHTS (fyi that clink-clanking you hear is the sound of me kicking all the buckets in the world.) As long as these boats are equipped with sleeping quarters, a kitchen and a toliet they can deduct the mortgage debt on these “homes.” (source)

Post navigation

4 comments

Sorry, but most of this applies to the 0.01% of income earners, not the 1%. Additionally, a lot of what you outline is misleading. I’ll address each section.

1. I don’t know how you got 0% capital gains tax. Not only do the rich have to pay capital gains tax, but they pay it at a higher rate because of their income.

2. Yes, Mitt Romney paid 15% in federal income taxes, but most Americans making 50-75k paid 7.8%. Someone that makes 100-200 paid 12.1%. The kicker? The bottom 50% of income earners paid 0% in income taxes. It puts Romney’s 15% in context. These are facts.

3. Yes, the rich enjoy the home interest deduction along with 67% of America. The rest of Americans can also deduct the full amount, while the PEASE limitation reduces the amount that the rich can deduct.

4. This just doesn’t make sense. How can you knock giving to charity?

5. Not many 1%’ers own private jets. That’s for corporate CEOs, professional atheletes and entertainers….many of the 0.01%

6. Anyone who owns a home can do this (67% of America), not just the 1%

7. I think Medicare is a ponzi scheme along with Social Security so I support ways to legally avoid paying this.

8. Anyone with a rental property can do this type of exchange, not just 1 percenters.

This entry sounds bitter. I’m no fan of the 1%, but why do the 99% let these tax rules stand if they’re so unfair? Unions and pensions that supposedly protected the middle class have been chipped away over the years and voters still support these laws.

It’s true that everyone hasn’t done a whole lot to fight these tax laws, but that’s mostly because so few people know about them (also the point of this post – to educate.) I actually have no problem with people who have earned their wealth in their lifetime (if you start a company and make it rich then good for you, you deserve that wealth) but it’s the generations of wealth where people are just born into money that is where these tax laws become entirely unfair. If someone didn’t earn the money in the first place and they can live on it tax free, then that’s a problem.

Stay in Touch

About Me

The anti-minimalist: I'm the absolute worst with money. I have a shopping addiction. That's exactly why this blog exists. HECC is not a typical personal finance blog. I started it in 2007 to hold myself accountable for binge spending, a dropping networth, and lack of overall fiscal literacy. 10 years later, had achieved a networth of over $500k. Now my goal is to hit $1M by 40. Recently married and with my first kid on the way, things are about to get... interesting. I write about the intersection of mental health and money, spending & investing, and millennial personal finance.